DALLAS—They are known as “Three Percenters,” followers of a movement that has rallied against gun control efforts nationwide, patrolled the U.S. border with Mexico and recently begun confronting Muslim Americans.
Followers describe themselves as armed “patriots.” But some of their leaders have been blamed for threats and vandalism against lawmakers, police and Muslims. One prominent member from Phoenix prompted an FBI alert in November after posting an expletive-filled Facebook video saying he was headed to upstate New York with guns to challenge a Muslim group.
In suburban Dallas, a protest at a mosque by armed, masked men, led by a Three Percent member, highlighted tension with the Muslim community. Also in Texas, the state has sued the federal government to halt Syrian resettlement. Police in September arrested a 14-year-old Muslim whose teachers in Irving, Texas, thought his handmade clock was a bomb. And two Muslim gunmen were shot outside a Dallas Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in May.
The Three Percenters have expressed concerns about national security in waging anti-Muslim activities this year. It’s unclear whether they’ve also been influenced by the provocative speech of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump following the deadly Paris attacks.
“We will interfere with every move they (Muslims) make towards taking over our country,” Dallas protest organizer David Wright said in response to questions the Associated Press sent to his personal Facebook page. “We are ready to fight back if they come at us violently.”
Wright, who plans to protest Saturday at a different mosque, hasn’t advertised the “Three Percenters” name in his activities. But he claimed membership in comments on Facebook and told the AP he was a leader in a Texas chapter. A second Facebook profile appends the Roman numeral “III” to his name, as do other Three Percenters, and features a black “III%” patch as a background photograph.
The Three Percenters movement began in 2008, galvanized by President Barack Obama’s election, followers and researchers say. The name comes from the disputed percentage of colonials who armed themselves and fought the British during the American Revolution.
The number of Three Percenters is unclear partly because anyone can ascribe to the movement. The man credited as the founder has claimed 3 million on his blog. One national Three Percenters’ Facebook group has about 12,000 members, including people from all 50 states.
Followers appear to consist mainly of white, male, conservative gun owners who believe the nation has been pushed to a tipping point by socialists in government aiming to disarm them, strip their constitutional rights and take their property, according to groups that track anti-government movements.
The Three Percenters lack a formal command structure, but have ideological similarities with other groups such as minutemen or militias. Their founder, a former militia member named Michael B. “Mike” Vanderboegh, stresses what he calls “armed civil disobedience.”
Vanderboegh, 63, a one-time nurse’s aide who lives in Pinson, Alabama, looks the part of an elderly professor. With the cadence of a Baptist preacher, he blends references to God and fist-banging disdain for “predatory government.”
“What they are selling is a lie told by pathological collectivist liars ... to satisfy their insatiable appetites for your liberty and your property, even at the cost of your life,” he told a crowd this year in Canon City, Colorado.
